Swine flu in Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan, November 10 — All the schools in Afghanistan have been closed by the government for three weeks because of the threat of swine flu. At the same time, the only pig in Afghanistan, previously found at the Kabul Zoo, has been quarantined. I thought the swine flu was finished, but I guess Afghanistan is so far behind that even the swine flu comes here late. At any rate, the streets are filled with people who look like masked bandits, who are afraid of the flu.

The residents of Kabul have lived through riots, demonstrations and suicide attacks, and when those things happen, nobody seems to bother; the schools stay open and work progresses, slowly but surely. We have even had rockets hitting major hotels and guest houses being assaulted with multiply people killed, but daily life for the residents of Kabul continued. We decided to stall our presidential election for months, and still life continued. In the words of Masooda Wardak, an instructor at American University, “We have people dying by scores from suicide attacks and nothing is done. One person dies from swine flu and the whole country closes.” Well, it is not exactly the “whole country,” but every school and educational institution has been closed by the government for three weeks. That is not a short time when you have a syllabus to cover.

And the interesting thing is that students are not happy about it. According to the Director of Student Affairs at the American University of Afghanistan, the students were “concerned over a sudden disruption of coursework." Students were not pleased to stop their studies for three weeks.

But what are the facts? According to a Radio Free Europe article on Nov. 5, "Swine flu fears spread from Ukraine to Afghanistan,” Afghanistan’s health minister Said Mohammad Amin Fatami said, “There have been 700 confirmed cases, with 273 of those among foreign soldiers stationed in the country. Eight Afghans have reportedly died so far.”

I guess that this is quite serious, but people still doubt that the only reason for closing the schools was the swine flu epidemic; instead, people say it is politically driven. They say that, because the government was worried about more demonstrations and protests after the elections, they closed the schools so that university students wouldn’t be able to organize and disrupt the new government.

The real problem is that Afghanistan is not ready for such an epidemic. There are not enough clinics to serve the population. According to an article on the CNN Health web page on Nov. 5, the minister of public health, Dr. Amin Fatemie, said, "We need at least 3.3 million doses of Tamiflu." The article states that, at present, the ministry estimates that it has only 51,000 doses, which is why prevention is key. Therefore, authorities are handing out face masks; that is why the city is covered with people looking like masked bandits.

But the locals are dealing with this as they do with all the other crises that come their way, and life continues. Whether it is suicide bombs or rocket attacks or swine flu, the tough and rough Afghans will survive.